There she befriended other young women with literary interests, and Finch began to dabble in poetry. She was, from an early age, drawn to poetry as a means of self-expression, even knowing that her pursuit would likely be only personal. It is crucial, I think, to Finch's ideological and literary purposes that though the poem amply analogizes the quality of experience possible in the "Retreat," it also rests in a subjective mood, called for and imagined but never realized within the frame of the poem itself. By the time the reader gets to line 39, in which the speaker describes her relaxed spirit surrendering to high-level spiritual thoughts, the reader is already accustomed to an almost stream-of-consciousness feel. The ambiguity is just one level of a larger phenomenon. (line 43) in "Reverie." Finch's nocturne is unlike Milton . "A Nocturnal Reverie" by Anne Kingsmill Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (1661 - 1720) From Winchilsea, Anne (Kingsmill) Finch, Countess of. Moreover, it is written in heroic coupletstwo lines of rhyming verse in iambic pentameter, usually self-contained so that the meaning of the two lines is complete without relying on lines before or after them. Part 2 "A Nocturnal Reverie" "A Nocturnal Reverie" does convey a message. Also in 1711, two other major players in Augustan literature, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele established The Spectator, a journal that would become the most influential periodical of the century. All of these elements make it easy to see why so many scholars are anxious to line "A Nocturnal Reverie" up with the classics of romantic poetry. She read the predominant poets of her time, and learned from what she read. INTRODUCTION The message behind this approach is that nature is alive and has much more to offer than aesthetic value. As Brower said, though in another context, "there are in Lady Anne's poetry traces" of a "union of lyricism with the diction and movement of speech." 499-513. To most, the idea of a woman writing serious poetry was still a bit far-fetched. MAJOR WORKS: Another kind of ambiguity has to do with the nature of the . Barbara McGovern has dealt efficiently with the biographical and historical material, although the lack of much in the way of documentary evidence means that her account of Finch's childhood and education, in particular, is based largely on surmise from what is known about her as an adult and from what is known about the typical upbringing for girls from upper class families at the time (p. 10). 448-49. Although repeatedly analyzed in a variety of contexts, it has not been reprinted as often as the other "favorite" poem by Anne: The Nocturnal Reverie. Even 'A Nocturnal Reverie', the Romantic favourite, is a poem of its time. The song of a nightingale (Philomel) is heard, along with the sound of an owl. . Despite Finch's obvious importance, however, the standard edition remains Myra Reynolds's The Poems of Anne Countess of Winchilsea (Chicago, 1903), although this has long been recognized as incomplete: it omits, among other things, the large body of manuscript poems held at Wellesley College, Massachusetts and recently edited by J. M. Ellis D'Allesandro (Florence, 1988). The poet falls into a reverie while listening to an actual nightingale sing. As you read, pick out which words express his pleasure and which ones express his pain and which words express his intense feeling and which his numbed feeling. Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA). Like the speaker, the reader experiences the flow and relaxation of the nighttime setting. Omen Therefore, its best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publications requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html. Besides the'Nocturnal Reverie,' the Countess wrote many other sweet . The speaker evokes a strong sense of serenity and escape in "A Nocturnal Reverie." That the retreat holds out the promise of intellectual stimulation for women in particular becomes clear in the relationship between two passages, one requesting "A Partner" (106), the other "a Friend" (197). Many scholars have argued that the seeds of romanticism are in the Augustan Age. Prior to that, William Wordsworth mentioned "A Nocturnal Reverie" in the supplement to the preface of his and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's second edition of Lyrical Ballads (1815). Personification is a literary device with which the author assigns human characteristics to non-human entities and is similar to anthropomorphism. Unlike other beaches, small pebbles make up the bed. The end of the poem, however, reveals the comment the poet makes about the struggles of daily life in civilization. But Augustan literature was not merely biting wit and lengthy verse and prose. The poem is serene in tone and rich in imagery. Barbara McGovern is one of the most well-known experts on Finch and her work. Anne Kingsmill Finch, the Countess of Winchelsea (1661-1720), holds an established position in the history of women's writing, but scholars have not always agreed on whether Finch reproduces or challenges the gender-bias of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century poetic conventions. At her funeral, her husband honored her memory by expressing to those in attendance how much he admired her faith, her loyalty, her friendship and support, and her writing. The speaker is completely enthralled by her experience outdoors, and she appreciates every aspect of it, making sure to include every animal, plant, flower, cloud, river, and glowwormin her telling. ." Finch's purpose is certainly not to show the archetypal permanence of the distinction, nor is it (as in "The Introduction") to show the ill effects of the distinction upon the female poet. The poem thus records a tectonic unsteadiness, working to deconstruct the myth of women as beautiful but insignificant even as it manifests the poet's anxiety about the "beauty" of her work in the very world that imposes that censure. The poet used anaphora at the beginnings of some neighboring lines. Anthropomorphism means to endow a non-human character with human traits and behaviours. As the poem draws to a close, the speaker longs to stay in the nighttime world of nature until morning comes and forces her back into her world of confusion. 61-80. Barbara McGovern argues that Finch's most sustained effort at satire, Ardelia's Answer to Ephelia, bears many thematic and technical similarities to Rochester's Letter from Artemesia in the Town to Chloe in the Country, and points out that both poets were Royalists who moved for a time in the same circles. In Finch's lifetime, she enjoyed a minimal amount of attention and respect for her work. Given the overall character of Augustan literature, why is "A Nocturnal Reverie" considered one of its titles? 3, Summer 2005, pp. Who were the major poets of the time? The owl sounds in the night for the purpose of leading the speaker to the right place. POEM TEXT A Nocturnal Reverie (1713) By Anne Finch, Countess of Winchelsea. W. H. Auden A Nocturnal Reverie - Summary. In this research the poem of Anne Finch, Countess of Winchelsea, "A Nocturnal Reverie" will be analyzed from an ecological perspective. Fresh grass stands strong and upright, suggesting that this poem takes place during spring. If a writer can't trust words, how can she trust that an unfriendly audience will accept poetry from a woman? The activities in . The Dolphins: About the poem. The speaker prefers this setting to that of her everyday life. "The Apology" 5. Today: Women are some of the most popular, celebrated, and frequently published poets. Ultimately, Finch's use of personification evokes the theme of nature as a living community. It is a time for renewed toil and activity. By way of unfolding this set of questions, I would like to argue for Finch's "The Petition for an Absolute Retreat" as an ars poetica that takes the mobius strip of writing and specularity as its thematic and structural principle. Harmon, William, and Hugh Holman, "Romanticism," in A Handbook to Literature, 9th ed., Prentice Hall, 2003, pp. The other winds are characterized as louder; therefore, the speaker is subtly making a comparison. "A Nocturnal Reverie" is strongly associated with Augustan writing in England. Hello, sign in. Reuben A. Brower notes in Studies in Philology, "In the eighteenth century the poetry of religious meditation and moral reflection merged with the poetry of natural description in a composite type," which includes Finch's "A Nocturnal Reverie. for only $16.05 $11/page. Average number of words per line: 7. It is reasonable to conclude, then, that Finch was far more influenced and inspired by the Augustans than by any pre-romantic influences that may have been stirring in England in 1713. As most fables go, it anthropomorphizes characters to convey moral lessons. But Finch goes further than this, arguing instead for a woman writer to symbolically divest herself of dependence upon the apparel of male-centered literary standards (to make herself "plain") and then to redress herself by following a symbolically "Winding" course that separates her from the domain of men and conducts her to a self-determined place that cannot be seen from without. Her critical biography of Finch covers new ground in a number of ways. The distant night sky is depicted as enigmatic and elusive. The speaker then notices that glowworms have appeared during the twilight hour, and she comments that their beauty can only last a limited time because they rely on the dark to show their light. Still, it has been poems such as "A Nocturnal Reverie" and "The Spleen" that have kept Finch's work in the canon of English literature of interest to scholars. Disability Customer Support . "The Introduction" " A Letter to HISTORICAL CONTEXT It exemplifies what is perhaps Finch's most sophisticated attempt to master a recurrent problem of the seventeenth-century female poet: how to participate in a discourse in which the poet is defined as a masculine subject. This poem is one continuous telling of the speaker's experience; it tells a story in a clear path from the beginning to the end. Finch, however, opts for the more subtle device of personification, bringing her setting to life through figures of speech that humanize the natural elements. In terms of form, "A Nocturnal Reverie" is rooted in two venerated, classically inspired traditions of poetry that both the Augustans and the Romantics admiredthe first of which being, as its title suggests, the nocturne. In the following excerpt, Hinnant compares the themes in Finch's poems "To the Nightingale" and "A Nocturnal Reverie.". John Donne's witty, punny, passionate "The Canonization" was first published in his posthumous 1633 collection, Poems. the poem's form and the foremost theme. It also propels the poem forward; as there are no hard breaks brought on by periods, other punctuation such as colons, commas, and semicolons instead serve to show the reader how one thought or image leads to the next. Clouds do not randomly float across the sky but act to hide and reveal the mysterious night sky. Amazon.com: A Study Guide for Anne Finch's "A Nocturnal Reverie": 9781375375061: Gale, Cengage Learning: Books. window.__mirage2 = {petok:"CsTeJ9Hg8KKAtMlpOlwcpZklVbhcLp3NKXJdVuKg54c-86400-0"}; Although some of Finch's work was published beginning in 1701, it was not until the appearance of her 1713 collection Miscellany Poems that she began to enjoy limited recognition by her contemporaries. Barbara McGovern sets out to redress the balance. The speaker describes the plants and flowers as not only being colorful but also as almost having personalities and interactions with one another. "A Nocturnal Reverie" is a fifty-line poem describing an inviting nighttime scene and the speaker's disappointment when dawn brings it to an end, forcing her back to the real world. FRANK BIDART Create a display that features the artwork and the poem. The term comes from the rule of Emperor Augustus in Rome, who was known for his love of learning and careful attention to writing. 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